Worth the Fall

Chapter 27

It wasn’t just me getting more of him.

He started getting more of me too.

The real me.

Not just the polished, scholarship-kid version of me that showed up to class with color-coded notes and impossible standards.

He started seeing the parts I usually kept hidden.

Like how I stress-clean when I’m overwhelmed.

How I cry when I’m angry, which is deeply humiliating and frankly unfair.

How I rewatch the same comfort movies every time life feels too loud.

How I talk to myself when I study.

How I can’t sleep when I have too much on my mind.

One Thursday night, he called me just after eleven.

“You should be asleep,” I whispered, curled under my blanket with my textbook open on my lap.

“So should you.”

“I’m studying.”

“You’ve been studying since seven.”

I frowned at the pages in front of me.

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, actually.”

“How?”

“Because I know you.”

That shouldn’t have done what it did to me.

But it did.

The silence stretched for a second too long.

Not awkward.

Just full.

And when he spoke again, his voice had softened.

“You get quiet when you’re tired.”

I looked down at the textbook, but the words had blurred.

Because he was right.

And somehow, that felt bigger than it should have.

“Are you calling to expose me?” I asked quietly.

He laughed under his breath.

“No.”

“Then why did you call?”

The line went quiet again.

And for one impossible second, I thought maybe—

maybe he was about to say something dangerous.

Something neither of us could take back.

But instead, he said:

“I just wanted to hear your voice.”

And God.

That should not have been enough to completely ruin me.

But it was.

It absolutely was.

I pressed my lips together and stared at my ceiling.

“You’re a lot.”

“I’ve been told.”

And because I didn’t trust my voice, I just smiled into the silence and let him stay there with me.

No pressure.

No performance.

Just breathing on opposite ends of the line like somehow that was enough.

And maybe it was.

Maybe, for that moment, it really was.

The first time he showed me his music, I realized I had been wrong about him.

Not fully.

Not entirely.

But enough to matter.

Because I had thought Landon Baxter was just a boy who wanted to sing.

A rich kid with a dream and enough money around him to make almost anything possible.

I had thought maybe music was just his rebellion.

Something pretty and reckless to do until real life caught up with him.

But I was wrong.

Because music wasn’t something he did.

It was something he was.

He showed me one Friday after school.

We were at the little loft his parents kept in San Francisco, the one he used whenever he didn’t feel like going home.

Which, I was beginning to realize, was often.

I stood in the doorway of the spare room while he sat on the edge of a stool with an acoustic guitar in his hands.

And for the first time since I met him—

Landon looked nervous.

Actually nervous.

I crossed my arms.

“You’re stalling.”

He looked up sharply.

“I’m not stalling.”

“You’ve tuned the same string like six times.”

He narrowed his eyes.

“I hate that you notice things.”

I smiled.

“No, you don’t.”

He exhaled through his nose, then looked down at the guitar again.

And when he finally started playing—

everything in me went still.

Because he wasn’t performing.

He wasn’t trying to be cool.

Wasn’t trying to impress me.

He was just…

there.

Open.

Unarmored.

Real.

His voice was lower than I expected in that quiet room.

Rough in all the right places.

Honest in a way that made my chest ache.

And the song—

God.

The song was beautiful.

Messy and emotional and unfinished and alive.

It sounded like all the things he never said out loud.

Like longing.

Like pressure.

Like wanting more than the life already laid out for you.

When he finished, the room went silent.

He looked down at the guitar.

Then over at me.

And for once, he didn’t have some teasing little smile ready.

He just looked… exposed.

Like maybe showing me that had cost him something.

“What do you think?” he asked quietly.

And for the first time in my life, I didn’t have enough words.

So I walked over to him.

Slowly.

Carefully.

Until I was standing right in front of where he sat.

Then I reached up, touched the side of his face, and said the only true thing I could think of.

“I think,” I whispered, “you were born for this.”

His eyes lifted to mine.

And something shifted.

Something deep.

Something irreversible.

Because that wasn’t a compliment.

It was permission.

Belief.

Faith.

And I think maybe no one had ever given him that without expecting something in return.

His hand slid around my wrist, gentle and warm.

And for a second, we just stayed like that.

Breathing the same air.

Looking at each other like maybe we were both beginning to understand exactly how dangerous this was becoming.

Then, very softly, he said:

“Stay.”

One word.

That was all.

But it sounded like a plea.

And maybe I should have been smarter.

Maybe I should have known then that boys like Landon Baxter were the kind you didn’t survive untouched.

But I wasn’t thinking about survival.

I was thinking about him.

So I nodded.

And stayed.

(Chapter Theme Song: You've Got A Way by Shania Twain)